Rating: 
Summary: Engrossing, entertaining . . .
Review: I've read "The Pilot's Wife" and "The Weight of Water," in addition to "Fortune's Rocks," which is the best of the 3 works. I simply couldn't put it down. I was drawn into the locale, the time, the characters, and I wanted to see how everything worked out for Olympia. Ms. Shreve's words seemed to flow in a way her previous works did not, and she developed much fuller, richer characters. I picture Billy Campbell (of ABC's "Once and Again") portraying John Haskell, but I don't know of an actress who could convincingly play Olympia. Perhaps an unknown. This book was, overall, one of those guilty pleasures that you enjoy because, even though you should be doing other things, you are so enjoying the read. I look forward now to Ms. Shreve's new book.
Rating: 
Summary: A true page turner!!
Review: This book truly had me flipping pages almost quicker than I could read them. It was interesting and chapter by chapter, you are inticed to keep reading just a bit more..... I couldn't wait for a break in my schedule to pick up where I had left off. The characters are defined so well and come to life. You begin to think you are walking right behind Olympia at times. The period that this takes place in only tops the cake and makes the novel more vivid. This is one of her best yet!
Rating: 
Summary: A Sad Disappointment-
Review: I have read all of Anita Shreve's books and I have loved them all until I read "Fortune's Rock". While it is a very well written book, it seemed contrived at the start and unbelievable mid-way through. Olympia Biddeford is an overly protected fifteen year old who knows only what her intellectual father desires her to learn. Dr. Haskell, a forty-one year old married father of four seems like a most unnatural attraction to a young adolescent. I can remember thinking that men in their forties were ancient when I was fifteen so it seems a rather long stretch to believe in this attraction. Now, nearly forty myself, I cannot fathom finding a fifteen year old boy at all sexually appealing. We know that in this day men and women go to jail for sharing intimacies with minors. I can't understand how Ms. Shreve expects her readers to believe that such a situation would be any less pardonable in 1900. For all the research that Ms. Shreve put into this book, I am left to wonder why she stopped at this most critical point.
Rating:
Summary: That's the point!
Review: I agree with the online reviews that Olympia's affair with Haskell is morally dispicable at best and criminal at worst. However, I think that is exactly the point that Anita Shreve was trying to make. I don't think the book was about a love affair rather the consequences of a love affair that seemed good and natural to the two perpatrators. Yes, the affair was criminal and the attraction questionable. Thus are the consequences of their actions so severe. That is the essence of the novel! Anita Shreve has artfully and tastefully rendered this complicated story to paper. Bravo!
Rating:
Summary: Well crafted, excellent story
Review: A great read. I loved her craft in taking the simple items (seaweed, jellyfish, littleneck clams on the beach) and turning them into a focus for her analysis and perspective on the immediate and longer term life struggle the protagonist fces. The story was a good one, and kept me turning the pages, but her magnificant style kept me going back over the precise words that she used. Much more focused than her earlier works.
Rating:
Summary: Could NOT put it down
Review: For someone who usually skims paragraphs or even skips chapters if a book is slow. . . this was a wonderful surprise. I even took it to one of my graduate classes and read it under my notebook instead of listening to lecture! Something I haven't done since college. I love the detail the author gives to settings around her characters. . . I was sad to be finished!!
Rating: 
Summary: Things that make you go , HMMM.......
Review: "Fortune's Rocks" is a story about a fifteen year old girl named Olympia who falls in "love" with a middle-aged man. The man just happens to be her father's friend and a distinguished doctor/author. To me, Olympia was displaying some sort of an adolescent puppy-love type of crush on the man, but the book makes it out to be this huge, passionate, once-in-a-lifetime love affair. That was a little hard to believe. Harder still to believe was that the doctor(Haskell) fell instantaneously in love with Olympia upon his first sight of her! The doctor basically blows off his beautiful wife and their three children, as well as his distinguished career, to have furtive, unprotected sexual encounters with this young girl(who, I might add, is only 3 years older than his older daughter). That pretty much grossed me out. The guy completely took advantage of Olympia! The portrayal of Haskell as a loving and caring man, sacrificing his all for his true love Olympia sickened me! He didn't love her -- he was looking for a little action from a nubile young chickie! When Olympia's parents and Haskell's wife find out about the affair, they break it up. Olympia is sent to her room (literally) for months on end and Haskell is sent into exile by his wife. Of course, Olympia ends up having Haskell's love-child.The child is taken away from her, only to have Olympia become reunited with her child years later. I didn't particularly like the way Haskell just disappears out of Olympia's life for nearly a decade and then suddenly just reappears out of the blue. And the fact that he ends up marrying her just didn't sit too well with me. It didn't seem believeable. Olympia was a naive adolescent with a teenybopper's crush on the handsome older man. Haskell was a man going through delayed adolescence and thinking with his you-know-what instead of his brain. The reason I gave this story 3 stars instead of 2 was because it was fairly well-written (even though I found the plot to be somewhat unbelieveable and a little tacky). I read an account similar to this recently: it was a newspaper story from my hometown describing a 42-year old male teacher who was having sexual encounters with a willing 13- year-old student. The difference? In real life, the guy was put in jail on lewd and lascivious acts with a minor and rape charges. Hmmm........
Rating: 
Summary: Too Close for Comfort
Review: Please! I was born in Biddeford, Maine, and spent many happy summer days at a local beach called Fortunes Rocks. As I read this book, I kept bumping up against those two names and having a tough perceptual time of it. I read somewhere that part of Shreve's research involved touring the southern Maine coast, where she must asssuredly have gotten her inspiration. Sorry, but it just didn't do it for me. The whole thing came off sounding too cartoonish and not at all believable.
Rating:
Summary: Fortune Rocks!
Review: I was suprised in reading some of the negative reviews for this novel by Anita Shreve. The book was superb. I was on the edge of my seat and read it in two days. I think those that don't find the relationship between Olympia and Haskell believable are those who have never been passionately in love. This book struck a cord. It is gripping, insightful and easy to read.
Rating:
Summary: Who will they exploit instead?
Review: Early on in this novel, the main character, Olympia, asks her father if she is to be governess to another main character's children. Olympia's father is a very wealthy man, you learn immediately upon reading this book, so naturally you would never expect Olympia to be working. Her father's emphatic reply, "Certainly not!; Heavens, Olympia, how could you have imagined I would exploit you in such a manner?" My question is, "Okay, who will they exploit instead?" I was given this book as a gift. It is not my style. I would never read something like this of my own choosing. The book is overly detailed but not in a complex or engaging way. It is too simple, too stilted (particularly conversations, which appear to be overwrought and not at all the way people would really speak). Shreve has written a book in the difficult third person, but she does not really succeed in this style. It is just too mechanical and not believable. The central relationship in the story, that of Olympia to John Haskell, does not have any great authenticity to it somehow. The adjectives are all there, but the depth of feeling is just not felt somehow. I cannot see why either of the two characters would sacrifice everything that they did in the book. I also found the contrived happyish ending to be a bit over the top. I am not saying that this is not a good book, nor am I saying that it is not readable. I read it in one night. It does engage you enough to want to find out what happens in the story. The characters also succeed in taking on a life of their own and are not at all one-dimensional. This will appeal to many people and will serve as a wonderful book for entertainment purposes. I am sure this is already a bestseller, a few steps above and more intelligent than a common romance novel. Shreve, while possessing considerable talent and the power to appeal to a broad audience, has not delivered the caliber or... genre book that I would personally prefer. Nobel probably would not favour a body of work comprised of novels like this either.
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